The crux of the human condition is that we have decisions to make. We constantly are faced with choices that we can’t avoid making. Other animals have this problem only to the extent that their habits are flexible, that self-control and learning from experience have replaced instinctive responses as crucial factors in their guidance systems. Simpler nervous systems rarely hesitate over their choices – probably because they are not in the habit of imagining alternative choices, each trailing its own wake of consequences. We become conscious of a choice before us only when naturally selected habits fail to make it for us by default.
In philosophy and theology, it is easy to entangle oneself in questions about the reality of ‘free will.’ But suppose you become a true believer in determinism: does it generate any predictions or expectations for you? If not, it is irrelevant to your guidance system. There are other reasons why determinism is irrelevant to the question of ‘freedom’ (see Dennett 2003), but this one suffices. Neither abstract questions about free will nor their answers are of any help when we are faced with actual choices and take responsibility for the consequences of choosing. In those situations, the very autonomy which is the basis of our freedom becomes the cross we bear.
Any help we can get with decision-making – that is, any trustworthy guidance we can get – is always welcome. One way of getting the crux of autonomy off our backs is to shift the burden of choice to a higher authority. In a way this is an evasion, because we still have to choose among the range of authorities that presents itself, and the moral basis on which an adult human can judge one authority to be ‘higher’ than another is unclear. However, once this choice is made, we have a guide in place that can simplify life by making choices for us, or at least framing and thus facilitating later decisions.
Most religions offer such a framework of authority and invite you to submit yourself to it (for your own good, of course). Many set up a contrast between your personal will and the higher Will, and set up the Saint as an exemplar of submission. The sign of sainthood is annihilation of the personal, private will, or its absorption into the universal Will or the will of God: as Jesus prayed to his Father just before giving himself up for crucifixion, not what I will, but what thou wilt (Mark 14:36). But if self-control means control of self by something or someone higher – an authority beyond self rather than within it – then the ideal is guidance by remote control.
From another spiritual perspective, the true authority or higher will is not located beyond the circle of self but rather at the centre of it, as a ‘higher self’ or as an intimacy with the divine. Thus the saint’s will is merged into God’s rather than being annihilated – though the contrast between these two approaches vanishes at the point where the distinction between self and God disappears.